About a Boy
by mysticxf
Summary: Post Season 2 Finale. What The Others might get if they questioned Kate’s relationship with love.


Lost and its characters belong to The Others. I keep trying to steal them back, but they keep hitting me with funky darts. Bastards. Post Season 2 Finale. What The Others might get if they questioned Kate's relationship with love.

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Lost -- About a Boy  
By Mystic  
June 12th 2006

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She was eight when he kissed her. She'd hit him in the back of the head, proclaimed him 'it' and run off into the field behind his house. Kate spent most of her afternoons in Tom's yard. It was easier than going home. Anything was easier than going home. Her legs carried her quick, she was used to running, and she heard him catching up, calling her name on a laugh. He teased her, his hand brushing the back of her shirt just before he tackled her.

Her body smacked loudly into a mud puddle and she threw her head back after they'd rolled twice, laughing into his face, watching the light auburn hair flutter against his forehead. He was older than she was, by almost two years, but she never noticed it. She was too stubborn to. Tom sighed, blowing her long bangs away from her eyes and chuckling down at her, his hands planting themselves in the mud at her sides.

"Gotcha, Katie," he sighed.

"You always catch me," Kate teased, her hand shoving at his chest, feeling the warmth there. "Maybe I let you," she added, giving him a mischievous look.

He leaned forward quickly, his lips touching hers before she could inhale and she closed her eyes. There was some new feeling growing in her stomach. It turned, making her feel nauseous and excited at the same time. Tom shifted on top of her, a knee dropping between hers and he slipped his tongue past her lips. Kate jerked, throwing him off and she jumped up, staring down at him.

"Sorry," he said, raising a hand slightly before pushing himself off the ground. He shook his head. "I'm sorry."

Kate shook her head. "No, it's my…" she slowed, bit her bottom lip and turned away. "Why did you…" she let her question hang unfinished, watching him with narrowed eyes.

Tom took in a long breath and when he exhaled, he sighed the words, "'Cause I love you."

She ran away from him. Her feet smacking into the dirt and then the grass and then the pavement as she raced past her house and as far as she could go before her lungs started to burn. Love wasn't real. No one could love her. No one.

It became a joke. He'd tell her he loved her and she'd threaten to run. He'd kiss her and she'd shove him away. He blamed it on her immaturity, constantly reminding her he was older, but they both knew the truth. He held out the tape player as they sat on either side of a deep hole they'd taken turns digging. She held her lunch box. She had to beg her mother to buy it for her and now she used it to put away the things that were most dear to them. Kate didn't have much to put in. A Minnie Mouse figurine 'cause she'd never been to Disney World but always wanted to. It was one of the dreams she hadn't lost.

She fingered the toy plane a moment before teasing him. Tom took it from her, put it on top of his baseball cap. He stared at her with something like wonder in his eyes when he said the word 'mom'. Nine babies. They'd shared a giggle. There was a family down the road that had nine children. Sometimes they'd sit up in a tree and watch them run around the yard and they'd talk about what having a family like that would be like.

_"We should have nine babies, you know, when we get married," he'd tell her, his elbow nudging her shoulder._

_"Yeah, whatever," she'd say with a roll of her eyes._

_"If you don't run away," he'd sigh._

"You always wanna run away, Katie," he said softly. The tape recorder held between his hands awkwardly, watching the dirt as she played with it at her side.

"You know why," she told him. And he did. She grabbed the recorder from him and clicked the stop button. It would just randomly cut into some weird song she'd recorded the night before. Kate tossed it into the lunch box and closed it tightly; her hands pressing it deep into the hole before she stood and watched him grab the shovel.

Her body jolted forward when the car crashed and she took a few long breaths. Scanning the area around her, she noticed he wasn't moving. Tom wasn't moving. His head was slumped forward and his chest was full of glass and blood. She said his name, hearing her voice waver and she grabbed hold of his shirt. But he was gone. And then she was too. Her feet carrying her faster now than they could when she was eight – faster than they'd ever carried her because she'd had years and years of practice.

He raised a hand towards her. This stranger. And he asked her to help him. Kate frowned, her wrists burning as she made her way cautiously towards him unsure of why she was trusting him. Something about his face, about his voice, about his vulnerability, made her move towards him instantly, almost love... She pushed the feeling away, love wasn't real, she told herself in the instant the needle broke his skin that first time. Love wasn't real, she reminded herself with each stitch.

But he comforted her. While she sewed his wound, he comforted her. She tied the last stitch, cleared her throat and backed away nervously. "I'm, um, finished." He turned slowly and ran a finger over the line of stitches, looking impressed. "I'd give you a lollipop, but…" she let the words trail, hearing him laugh as he stood and reached for his shirt.

"Thanks," he said sheepishly, his eyes shifting from hers to the ground. "We should get back to camp."

"Camp?" The word surprised her for some reason. Maybe she hoped they'd be the only ones.

He gave her a curious look. "There are at least forty people out there, who knows how many are hurt. I'm…"

Kate nodded, "A doctor, I know." She nervously threw a hand up. "So we should get back. See what we can do." She didn't realize until they were sitting by a campfire a few hours that she had thought of them as a unit, as a 'we' and this time when that feeling rose in her stomach, she embraced it.

His mouth was sweet, soft, open and she grabbed hold of his head, her hands feeling the short hairs there. His beard tickled her chin, her palms, and she moved closer to him, feeling his hands fall from her shoulders to her waist as he deepened their kiss. It wasn't what she expected. She expected to run. She expected to be halfway across the island, but something stopped her.

Jack stopped her.

Just the thought of him, his disappointment in what she'd done, in how she was feeling. She was supposed to be stronger than this.

Her thoughts tumbled over each other in her mind as he broke into the clearing to ask her what was wrong. Angry and concerned and the emotions only doubled as she stood and shouted at him. She wasn't good enough. Not good enough to love him. Not good enough to be loved by him. By anyone.

And that's when his anger broke. When he realized there was something truly wrong and he did what no one else in her life had done. He held on. He took hold and wouldn't let her go and she had to turn, had to face him to fight him, but she couldn't fight him and she didn't understand why.

Her body pressed tightly against him and he moved, shifting his weight into her and she pulled away, her eyes scanning his, seeing what she'd seen in a young boy's eyes almost twenty years ago as they lay in the mud on an old farm. A pure love for her she couldn't understand, didn't want to understand. Because it was real. And it was there. And she didn't deserve it. Kate ran from that feeling in her stomach, from that look in his eyes.

She wasn't ready for it to be real.

Jack looked at her on the dock and he nodded, something in his eyes trying to calm her, and she understood, instantly. She counted, watching his eyes locked on hers, even in that instant that he couldn't see her, she felt connected to him because she let him in, let that feeling she'd fought for so long in. They were in this together. He would never leave her side; she would never leave his. Because love was real and she wasn't going to run anymore.

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Finis 


End file.
